Chapter 68
Rachel checked the kitchen first because it was the closest room and because part of her still expected to find Walter at the table with his repair manual and a cup of coffee.
The table was empty. Five plastic buckets sat along the baseboard near the sink, each covered with a fitted lid.
A larger container, the kind meant for holiday decorations, sat beside the refrigerator with water painted across its side in Walter’s blocky handwriting.
The counters were clean. Dish towels hung neatly from the oven handle.
A pot sat on the cold stove with dried residue at the bottom.
She moved through the living room without stopping.
The furniture had been rearranged. The couch faced the woodstove instead of the television, and blankets were folded across its cushions.
A mattress lay on the floor near the heating vent, covered with a rumpled sheet.
Walter had moved the sleeping area downstairs so that the woodstove could warm everyone.
He’d been conserving heat and thinking ahead.
Rachel knew all of this within seconds of seeing it. Walter had prepared. He had organized. He had kept the house functioning long after the utilities failed. The evidence was everywhere, and none of it changed the fact that the rooms were empty.
She took the stairs two at a time. Her side pulled with each step, but the pain had become background noise beneath something louder.
Hannah’s bedroom door stood partially open.
Rachel pushed it wider and stopped in the doorway.
The bed was made. It wasn’t the careless throw of blankets Hannah usually left behind.
The corners were tucked, and the pillows were arranged.
The closet door stood open a few inches.
Empty hangers hung near the front where Hannah’s jackets should’ve been.
The desk held a stack of school notebooks, a pencil cup, and a hairbrush Hannah had owned since she was twelve.
The things Hannah would’ve taken were gone.
What she’d left behind remained in place, waiting for a return that hadn’t happened.
Rachel stood in the doorway until her breathing steadied.
Then she crossed the hall to Caleb’s room.
His bed was unmade. Clothes lay across the floor near the hamper.
A model airplane hung from the ceiling by fishing line, untouched.
The bookshelf held paperback novels with cracked spines and a stack of drawing paper shoved between two thicker books.
Rachel pulled the paper free. The top sheet showed dark smoke rising above houses drawn in a child’s uneven lines.
The smoke filled the upper half of the page, thick and heavy, with orange crayon bleeding through beneath it.
The houses beneath were simple rectangles with triangular roofs, but the windows had been painted black, as if the rooms inside were dark or empty.
She set it aside. The second drawing showed people gathered around buckets.
The figures were simple stick shapes, yet their bodies bent forward, their arms extended, and their faces turned down toward whatever the buckets held.
One figure lay on the ground beside the group.
Rachel couldn’t tell whether Caleb had meant the person to be resting or hurt.
The third drawing made her hand freeze. Three figures stood together near the bottom of the page.
Walter was the tallest, drawn with glasses and stooped shoulders Rachel would’ve recognized anywhere.
Hannah stood beside him, her hair longer than Rachel remembered, with one arm extended as if she were pointing.
Caleb had drawn himself smaller and half-hidden behind Walter’s leg.
Several men stood around them, carrying long guns.
The weapons had stocks, barrels, and triggers, with a level of detail Caleb’s drawings had never included before.
Rachel sat on the edge of the bed. The paper trembled in her grip.
She tried to connect these images to the boy who’d once filled notebooks with dinosaurs, spaceships, and cartoon animals with exaggerated smiles.
Something had happened, and it had changed what her son saw when he put crayon to paper.
She set the drawings on the bedspread and checked the closet.
Empty hangers. Shoes missing from the rack.
The dresser drawers held socks, underwear, and T-shirts Caleb had outgrown.
The things he’d left behind told Rachel nothing except that Walter had been practical about what to carry.
She searched Walter’s sleeping area downstairs.
A fold-out cot sat near the kitchen where the woodstove’s heat would reach it.
She found nothing unexpected. The bed had been stripped.
Walter’s reading glasses lay on the small table beside it, which meant he’d taken his spare pair.
His tool belt was missing from its hook near the basement door.
The basement stairs creaked under her weight.
The space below smelled of concrete and stored potatoes.
Walter’s workbench stood against the far wall, with tools arranged by size and use on pegboard hooks.
Several were missing, including a claw hammer, screwdrivers, and wire cutters.
They were the tools he would’ve needed for repairs on the road.
The remaining tools hung in their places, waiting.
The garage offered no new answers. Walter’s bicycle leaned against the wall, its tires flat.
Manual tools hung from hooks above the workbench.
Several portable tools were gone, fitting everything else Rachel had seen inside the house.
Back in the kitchen, she opened the pantry door.
Empty food containers sat on the shelves, arranged by size instead of being thrown away.
Oatmeal canisters, rice bags, and bean packages had all been emptied, rinsed, and saved for reuse.
Handwritten dates marked the inside of the door in Walter’s steady print.
The numbers beside food categories declined week by week.
A piece of furniture blocked the rear door.
A bookshelf lay on its side, propped up by other heavy furniture.
The front door remained usable. Walter had expected trouble from one direction, but he hadn’t intended to seal the family inside.
He’d planned for threats and still kept a way out.
She returned to Caleb’s room and sat on the edge of the bed with the drawings spread across her lap.
The paper felt fragile between her fingers.
Her children had lived through whatever those images showed, and she hadn’t been there to stand between them and any of it.
“Rachel,” Sophie said.
Sophie stood in the hallway with a notebook in both hands. Its cover was bent from use. Hannah’s name was written across the front in her daughter’s sloping handwriting, the letters pressed deep into the cardboard.